It ’s a funny time to be a Brit right now , with the highly controversialBrexitvote sending shockwaves through social club – presumptively result in some tip-tilted afternoon tea cups – and leaving many question exactly what it means to be British . Yet while the electorate may have chosen to isolate itself from its foreign neighbors , a new study has reveal that many UK residents are not quite as native to their little island as they may think .
According to research follow byAncestryDNA , the inherited make - up of the average Brit is just 36.94 percentAnglo - Saxon , with the remainder being made up largely of Celtic , Norse , Western European , Iberian , and Southern European DNA , as well as a smattering of genes from further afield .
This is ground on an analysis of the genetic chronicle of 2 million citizenry worldwide using AncestryDNA ’s habitation testing kits , which harness microarray - based autosomal DNA testing techniques to produce a full profile of a person’sgenome .
From nothing more than a desoxyribonucleic acid sampling , the run is capable to analyze more than 700,000 location within this genome , tracing DNA back over 500 year to 26 different regions around the humankind .
Within the UK , the people of Yorkshire – home to the likes of Game of Thrones star Sean Bean – have the high balance of Anglo - Saxon DNA , with an average of 41 percent . Londoner , meanwhile , were find to have the smashing mixture of non - British genes , with the highest concentrations of deoxyribonucleic acid from 17 of the 26 world-wide regions found among residents of the upper-case letter .
On median , 21.59 percent of each Brit ’s genetical material is of Celtic origin , with 19.91 percent coming from westerly European countries like Germany and France , 9.2 percent come from Scandinavia , and 3.05 percentage bear an Iberian flavor .
Looking nigher at regional differences , the people of Wales have the gamy proportion of Spanish and Lusitanian DNA , while Scotchman have the most Finnish and Northwest Russian genes and those from the E of England have more Italian and Greek ancestry than other Brits .
remark on these finding , AncestryDNA spokesperson Brad Argent explained that “ at a fourth dimension when the construct of British personal identity is at the forefront of many people ’s brain , it ’s interesting to see that when it comes to our ancestry , we ’re not as British or Irish as we may suppose . ”
